Overview
Introduction
My corpus is on John Mayer, specifically his albums. I am an avid listener so studying and analyzing his music would of course be an interesting topic for me. With eight studio albums, John Mayer has a well-rounded discography that arguably spans across many different genres such as blues, pop, rock, folk, and country. This leaves significant room for analysis into his music. Having a discography that spans across various genres allows for different directions to be taken in terms of investigation. The first possibility is to look into how John Mayer’s music has changed over time. The second is that a comparison can be made between one or all of his studio albums and their possible respective genres to conclude how John Mayer adheres to said genre. And lastly, is to conclude if John Mayer follows any trends in his music that allow us to possibly define John Mayer’s main genre of music.
The objective will essentially aim to anaylze John Mayer’s music in various ways. The first level of analysis will be to explore his discography in search of any possible trends. The second level will be to identify how well one or each of John Mayer’s albums adhere to their possible genres. The conclusion of this study will be to see if it is possible to summarize John Mayer’s music in a single genre. An important consideration to note is that John Mayer obviously did not produce each album with the intent of sticking to a single genre. The aim therefore is to see if and how well each album adheres to a respective genre. In addition to this, an analysis will be made on Spotify’s “John Mayer Radio” playlist as it is a representation of what Spotify considers to be similar to John Mayer’s music. This will be my second level of analysis. This analysis will show who Spotify associates John Mayer with and it might reveal what, based on which musical elements, this association is based on.
Using the Spotify API, data from each song off of each album can be pulled and analyzed. Important considerations must be accounted for first and foremost. Although the Spotify API is a powerful tool for music analysis, it is not perfect in its analysis of music. Certain criteria are poorly measured or immeasurable for the Spotify API, elements such as emotions and lyricism are difficult to analyze through the software.
Preliminary Analysis
Level One Analysis: An Exploratory Analysis of John Mayer’s Discography
Graph 1 is a representation of the valence of John Mayer’s entire discography over time. Based on the data points alone, it is clear that there is little to no correlation or patterns. The only pattern visible in Graph 1 may be shown in the Energy variable. Though weak, a lower amount of energy a track has tends to be lower in valence as well. This graph also shows variety of each album through the colour of each point in each set on the x-axis. Each vertical cluster represents an individual album. Browsing each cluster shows that each album has a different overall energy. An example of this are the first cluster in 1999 and the 2004 clusters. The 1999 cluster, “Inside Wants Out”, seems to be more grey while the 2004 clusters, “As/Is”, are show to be brighter in colour representing a higher overall energy. This is probably because the 2004 clusters are live albums and therefore could result in a higher energy.
Graph 2 is a representation of the speechiness and instrumentalness of John Mayer’s discography. In terms of instrumentalness the data does not vary as data points can be seen across the y-axis. However when looking at speechiness despite the lack of variety there seems to be a trend at the 0.03 mark on them x-axis. This trend at the 0.03 mark on the x-axis demonstrates a consistency that John Mayer has in the writing/producing of his music as well as the balance of vocals to instruments.
The Valence of Each Album
The Energy of Each Album
The third stage of the exploratory analysis is a visualization of the Mean of the key variables used in the previous stage of the exploratory level of analysis.
Comparisons
Level Two Analysis: Anaylzing Artists suggested by the Spotify algorithms
As mentioned, the second level of analysis will be to analyze the Spotify-generated playlist “John Mayer Radio in order to see how Spotify categorizes and compares John Mayer’s music to other artists and genres.
How does Spotify categorise John Mayer’s music in comparison to other artists?
Sob Rock
Level Three Analysis: Deep Dive into Sob Rock
After the initial exploratory analysis of John Mayer’s studio albums, his last studio album “Sob Rock” seemed like a good choice to single and analyze further. Various magazines, including Guitar.com and Variety magazine, have already compared the album to 80’s pop music based on its tone as well as its aesthetic.
Comparing Sob Rock as a whole to general pop music from the 80s
*** The two graphs are a side-by-side representation of the energy, tempo and instrumentalness of the tracks on Sob Rock and Spotify’s “80’s Hits” playlist. The variables energy, tempo and instrumentalness were chosen as they were deemed
Comparing Sob Rock to “Divorcecore”
Analysis of “Shot in the Dark”
The chromagram to the left shows a spectral analysis of the song “Shot in the Dark”, which contains many elements that are associated with the 80s era of music. As shown by the graphic, the song is in D major.